Man City Close To Replacing Mancini With Pellegrini

Featured Stories

Reports, although unconfirmed, suggests that Manchester City are close to replacing Roberto Mancini with Manuel Pellegrini.

The 48-year-old Italian manager, who won the league title last season, is reportedly on the verge on the being sacked by the Manchester club. Social media and English media have been busied with unconfirmed rumours since City’s shock defeat at the hands of Wigan in the final of the FA Cup.

But it is believed that Mancini would have been sacked even if his team would have managed to lift that trophy at Wembley this weekend. The club say their neighbour regaining the Premier title after a disappointing season domestically and in Europe, where they were knocked out in the group stage for the second season in a row – admittedly from a very tough group.

Malaga manager, Manuel Pellegrini, who guided his team to a wonderful run in Europe, despite the club facing financial and legal turmoil off the pitch, has been linked with the job in the blue half of Manchester. The 59-year-old has also been linked with Real Madrid, as replacement for Jose Mourinho, and with PSG, as a replacement for Carlo Ancelotti, although he has recently dismissed all those claims.

“Regards my future, I have not spoken to anyone. We will wait and see what happens at the end of the season. At this moment in time I have no agreement in place: not with Manchester City, not with Roma, not with Napoli, not with PSG, not with any of the clubs who have been mentioned.” – Pellegrini was quoted in press.

But reports in Spain suggest that the Chilean has already bid farewell to his players. Malaga will miss out on Europe even if they manage to hold on to the 6th place in the league due to the ban imposed on them by UEFA. The club is likely to lose all its star players in the summer as they will try and restore financial parity.

Mancini is however furious with his club officials, once again, as he has failed to understand why the club’s communication department hasn’t taken any step in squashing the speculations regarding his future. He also revealed that the club is yet to talk to him regarding his future, although he wouldn’t be surprised if they do decide to sack him. In an interview published in Dailymail, after the FA Cup final, the Manchester City boss revealed his frustration.

“I don’t know why they don’t stop this rubbish. You wrote this for the last six months, and for the last two weeks. It’s too much. I don’t understand why.

“For football, I talk and I take responsibility in the press.

“If it’s true, it will be true . . . I don’t know. For me, no, I am happy to work for Manchester City. I’m happy with my job, I’m happy about what we did in three years. I am disappointed now that we lost this final. In football, everything can happen. I was sacked after seven trophies with Inter. It’s not my job to stop the stories.

“Also last year it was the same: no-one did anything about this. I say to you one thing. When I worked for Inter Milan, the newspapers were the same as they are here and I thought always, “It’s not true, we are winning Serie A for the third year in a row.

“After the Italian Cup final I read the Corriere della Sera, a newspaper very close with Inter, and one journalist wrote that probably Inter will sack me.

“In that moment, I understood that maybe it was true. You ask me about Pellegrini. I don’t know whether it’s true or not.”

It was earlier reported that City’s new Spanish chief executive, Ferran Soriano, and sporting director Txiki Begiristain, who already had close connections with Pellegrini, have decided that it is in the best interest of the club to dismiss the Italian now rather than taking him to the preseason tour. In his absence, assistant manager Brian Kidd (or even former Arsenal captain Patrick Vieira) is expected to lead the squad to their New York trip in the summer break. So effectively the Italian manager could lose his job before Manchester City’s next game against Reading.